A History of Greek Philosophy / ARISTOTLE

Page 16

“If our view thus far be correct, it follows that the chief good for man consists in the full realisation and perfection of the life of man as man, in accordance with the specific excellence belonging to that life, and if there be more specific excellences than one, then in accordance with that excellence which is the best and the most rounded or complete. We must add, however, the qualification, ‘in a rounded life.’ For one swallow does not make a summer, nor yet one day. And so one day or some brief period of attainment is not sufficient to make a man happy and blest.”

The close relation of this to the teaching of Socrates and Plato need hardly be insisted on, or the way in which he correlates their ideas with his own conception of an actualised perfection.

Aristotle then proceeds to a definition of the ‘specific excellence’ or virtue of man, which is to be the standard by which we decide how far he has fully and perfectly realised the possibilities of his being. To this end he distinguishes in man’s nature three modes of existence: first, feelings such as joy, pain, anger; second, potentialities or capacities for such feelings; third, habits which are built upon these potentialities, but with an element of reason or deliberation superadded. He has no difficulty in establishing that the virtue of man must be a habit. And the test of the excellence of that habit, as of every other developed capacity, will be twofold; it will make the worker good, it will cause him to produce good work.

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A History of Greek Philosophy : Table of Contents
Cf. D'Arcy W. Thompson, Aristotle's Natural Science

Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/history-of-philosophy/aristotle.asp?pg=16